One Last Time
by MirandaAI
Summary: The prelude to the Dark Ritual. Please note that I headcanon the Ritual as being firstly physical, and only after, mystical. P.S.: English is not my first language, so please excuse the errors you might come across.


It was the last time, they both knew it. The last time they'd get to touch each other, to feel one another's breath upon their restless young skins. However slim hopes he had of seeing her again, they were too slim to consider. The last time her golden eyes would be so close to him, looking into his very soul with their piercing gaze. He didn't see anything in her eyes – it was a cluster of emotions, of anger, desire, and courage. But not once did he doubt the love she had for him, a love which time, distance or separation could break or even weaken. He had been her first – and he would be her last. She might not had been his first, but she was the first one he actually felt, the first one whose nails in his skin created pleasure, not pestilence. The first woman he'd respected and would have died for, if need be. The first woman he'd adored with his whole spirit.

Venais Cousland, king-consort of Ferelden. The title was much more than he'd ever hoped, but right now, nothing mattered more than Morrigan, the love of his life. He could've lost it all in a second and it wouldn't have mattered, if it would have meant another night with her. His armour fell with a metallic noise on the wooden floor after a swift move of Morrigan's skilled hands, leaving him in his smallclothes, consisting of a pair of shorts. She ran her fingers over his mildly hairy abdomen, tracing invisible patterns on his chest and finally reaching his long since shaved jaw. She rested her forehead against his, while he took off her vest, uncovering her pale, rather small breasts. He put his arms on her cold and narrow neck.

"I don't want you to go..." Venais said, sitting down on the bed.

Morrigan knelt in front of him, looking in his eyes with utmost sadness. "I don't want to leave either, but this is how it must be."

"But how am I supposed to live without you?"

Morrigan chuckled. He knew a different life, he would've managed, he was surrounded by women and men. But her? She didn't know any different. The thing that greeted her into this cruel world was her equally cruel mother. And where she was about to go, she would've been just as lonely as she was used to. "You will manage, my love. You always have." she said, stroking his now long, carrot-red hair.

She sat down next to him. He gently pushed her on the bed, then took off his shorts and her skirt. They were now both naked, exposed to one another as they always should have been, for they were but two halves of the same whole, only different in small places. _They_ were meant for each other, but _it_ was not meant to be.

Venais penetrated her slowly, as if it was the first time, as if her body was still an unknown, sacred territory that only he was allowed to explore. But he saw it in her eyes – there was no pleasure, physical pleasure was way beyond the point of what they were doing. It was the pure satisfaction of being _there, _in that moment, when they were connected not only physically, but on levels far above what mortals knew. And this love, this divine energy between them was something neither of them thought was possible to find in someone else.

And they were so close to one another, one last time. Their hearts beating at the same time, impossible to tell one from the other. Morrigan's long sighs and Venais's quiet moans echoing through Redcliffe's castle and through their troubled minds. And when they'd reached climax together, the noble rolled over and the witch put her head on his chest, enjoying his breath and heartbeat like the most pleasant music she'd ever heard.

"Choose your last words; this was the last time." Morrigan whispered softly, raising her eyes towards Venais, who was already looking down at her and playing in her raven hair.

"I love you." he responded; if he or she were to die, at least he got to assure her that his feelings had always been true.

She lifted her hand from his chest and wiped off the tear forming in his blue eye, then smiled. "I love you too." she said, with a confidence in her words that she'd never had before.

The last time. _Their_ last time.


End file.
